Building a Culture of Education Data Use in the Pacific

The Pacific Community will conduct a review in Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands which will help senior managers better understand the need for high quality data when drafting policies and decisions.

Educational Management Information Systems (EMIS) are used in many island countries including the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Vanuatu to provide high quality data to use in guiding and supporting education development.

The review by SPC will include senior government officials in each of the three countries and will focus on their beliefs and behaviours about education statistics. In particular, the exercise aims to identify the challenges (political, technical, capacity and cultural barriers) to effective use of data. The findings will be used to improve practise and identify incentives and motivations around data use for the countries participating in the study.

When asked about the education data review workshop, Serge Lewawa, Director of Policy and Planning, Vanuatu said “the challenge of education management information systems is finding a way to ensure that hard data generated from the systems are factored into decision making in our country”.

Betty Jitoko, Senior Programme Manager at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and trade noted that the project is being implemented by the Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP) of the Pacific Community (SPC) in partnership with the Australian Government, funded and supported at both the national and regional levels.

The Pacific Community has prepared officials from the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Vanuatu along with EQAP officers to review data use in each country’s political and economic context during the September to November 2017 period. The findings from these interviews then will feed into formulating a set of key indicators of data use which may be used by countries to inform further action and share best practises within the region.